page_title: British railway milk trains
section_title: Operations
hierarchical_section_title: British railway milk trains / Operations
caption_attribution_description: English: Down Milk empties at Clink Road, near Frome. View NE, towards Westbury, Reading and London; ex-GWR London - Reading - Westbury - Taunton etc. main line. (Just ahead of the train the Frome-avoiding line to Blatchbridge Junction commences). This is probably the very important Kensington - Plymouth Milk empties, returning tank-wagons to various Milk Depots in the West Country which supplied a large proportion of the capital's needs - before the age of Motorways. The locomotive is 4-6-0 No. 4941 'Llangedwyn Hall' (built 7/29, withdrawn 10/62).
context_page_description: Milk trains were a common sight on the railways of Great Britain from the early 1930s to the late 1960s. Introduced to transport drinking milk from creameries to consumers in the cities, by 1981 they had all been replaced by road transport.
context_section_description: A typical creamery would load a couple of milk tank wagons a day, with a single 3,000-imperial-gallon (14,000 l; 3,600 US gal) three-axle wagon carrying enough pasteurised milk to supply the daily needs of about 35,000 people. However, that same 12-long-ton (12,000 kg) wagon loaded with 3,000 imperial gallons (14,000 l; 3,600 US gal) of milk at 13 long tons (13 t; 15 short tons), weighed as much as a loaded passenger carriage: 25 long tons (25 t; 28 short tons). This resulted in the need to pull the heavy milk train with a high-powered express locomotive, in order to keep time delays to a minimum. Typical GWR locomotives deployed on milk trains included topline express locomotives such as Kings, Castles and Halls, unlike the archetypal mixed-goods express or even slower but equally heavy coal train. After dieselisation in the 1960s, Western diesels were deployed on milk trains, again a typical passenger express locomotive on the time.
  Milk tank wagons were distributed around the small local creameries in the afternoon, and then collected by the first train in the morning. On the GWR, it was not uncommon to see a pannier tank engine and GWR autocoach on a local passenger service pulling a milk tank wagon early in the morning. After 1959 four- and six-wheeled goods vehicles were banned from passenger trains, and so dedicated milk trains were scheduled. These smaller numbers of milk tank wagons were collected at the nearest mainline station or junction goods yard, and then either became the nucleus of a new milk train heading towards London, or were attached to a dedicated passing milk train that had started further down the mainline.
  In the 1960s, the average shipping distance for milk was 250 miles (400 km) by rail. As most milk is produced in the West Country (where the rain falls), but consumed in London and the East where the bulk of the population resides, most milk trains were west-east running. Express Dairies had two major depots in London: one in Kensington, which took deliveries from the GWR and SR; and one in Hendon which took deliveries shipped by the LMS from Carlisle, then the longest dedicated milk train route in the United Kingdom. The term "milk run" became synonymous in railway terms and later the English language, as a routine trip where the timetable was set and remained unaltered.
  The SR and later the Southern Region of British Railways ran two regular milk trains from Torrington every day, which served both the United Dairies creamery and bottling plant at Vauxhall, and the Express Dairies creamery at Morden. Filled by road tankers from the Torridge Vale Dairies, the first train of eight wagons left Torrington at 14:47, the second of six at 16:37, split due to the weight of the full milk tank wagons. The first train arrived at Clapham Junction in the evening, and reduced its length by half so that it did not block Vauxhall station while unloading. It would then proceed to Vauxhall, and pull into the "down" side platform, where a discharge pipe was provided to the creamery on the other side of the road. There was also pedestrian access from below the station, under the road to the depot, in the tunnel where the pipeline ran. The unloaded train would then proceed to Waterloo, where it would reverse and return to Clapham Junction to pick up the other half of the train. The procedure was then repeated, so that the entire first milk train was unloaded between the end of evening peak traffic and the start of the following morning. The second train from Torrington would also split at Clapham Junction, but only half of its milk tanks would be propelled to Vauxhall, while the other half were dispatched to the Express Dairies depot at Morden. In the late morning, both trains' now empty milk tanks would be combined into one express train, and returned to Torrington. Milk trains from Torrington stopped in 1978, the last milk train on the former SR.
  The longest surviving milk runs were from Fishguard in West Wales, and Long Rock near Penzance, both to the former Express Dairies plant then run by the MMB at Kensing
caption: Afternoon of 22 August 1959: GWR Hall Class 4-6-0 No. 4941 Llangedwyn Hall hauls an empty train of 13 milk tank wagons and one Siphon G past Frome, Somerset on the Reading to Taunton line, on the return run from Express Dairies Kensington Olympia to Plymouth, Devon
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